{"id":611,"date":"2012-07-14T13:22:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-14T13:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/14\/amazon-reviews-for-creepy-olympic-mascots\/"},"modified":"2012-07-14T13:22:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-14T13:22:00","slug":"amazon-reviews-for-creepy-olympic-mascots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/14\/amazon-reviews-for-creepy-olympic-mascots\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon reviews for creepy Olympic mascots"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Charlie Stross]<\/p>\n

The Blitz spirit<\/a>:
\"be<\/p>\n

To all those of you who live in London and are having to put up with the current Olympic insanity, I send my condolences.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don’t, to give you some idea of the sheer cognitive weirdness<\/em> of LOCOG (who, I swear, could keep a psychiatrist working on new diagnoses to add to DSM-VI for a decade), here’s one example of how London (and the UK in general) is responding to these neo-fascist killjoys.<\/p>\n

See, the Olympics have two cuddly toy mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville<\/a>. (Never mind, for now, that these focus-group-tested horrors resemble a bizarre cross between an animated CCTV camera and a dildo with legs: it’s the thought that counts.)<\/p>\n

Of course, as is always the case with sporting mascots these days, merchandising happens: toy plushies are on sale<\/a>. And so are much more dubious souvenirs<\/a>. (“Hello, I’m Wenlock! Don’t I look smart in my police officer’s uniform? I have the important job of protecting you on your journey to the London 2012 Games … we can have lots of fun together!”<\/span><\/em>)<\/p>\n

No, seriously: go marvel at the true Orwellian horror of the product<\/a>, then read the customer reviews. Especially the one-star reviews<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Blitz Spirit is still alive and screaming and on display inside Amazon.co.uk’s reader feedback!<\/p>\n

(Final note for LOCOG rights gestapo: I do not consent to the idiotic terms of use<\/a> that I have been informed can be found at the other end of that link. If you object to this blog entry, feel free to piss up a rope.<\/span><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Charlie Stross] The Blitz spirit: To all those of you who live in London and are having to put up with the current Olympic insanity, I send my condolences. For those of you who don’t, to give you some idea of the sheer cognitive weirdness of LOCOG (who, I swear, could keep a psychiatrist working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-9R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}